ROYAL NAVY CLAIM FIRST VICTORY OF THE SEASON IN FINE STYLE
The Navy and Cambridge were part of a 66 point thriller on Weds evening in Portsmouth in the Navy's third game of the season. The Navy triumphed 38-28 in a fast and open game that saw the best performance of the season so far.
Cambridge opened the brighter team and immediately put the Navy under pressure, but resolute defence kept them to 2 penalties kicks in the for 10 minutes.
The Navy then had their best spell of the game with good continuity between forwards and backs, earned themselves penalties from the pressure and choose to kick to touch, from the resulting lineout the maul worked well and LNA (AH) (Ben) Priddey (RNAS Culdrose), in his first game of the season scored the first of his two tries on the night.
Continued possession and territory from the navy led to ET (ME) (Dale) Sleeman (HMS Raleigh) breaking down the defence and finishing off a strong 40m run in for the navy's second try of the night.
Back came Cambridge with a signature break from first phase, good support play and quick feet saw Andy Murdoch bring the students back to within a point. The navy re-grouped, applied the pressure again and in almost a replica of his first try Priddey went over just before half time to leave the navy in front 19-11 at the break.
The start of the second half was very similar with Cambridge the dominant team in attack, however, within 5 minutes, from promising Cambridge attacks the navy defence pressed hard and Mne (Jack) Foster (40 Cdo RM) intercepted twice and ran in 2 long range tries, opening the score to a comfortable 33-11.
This spurred Cambridge on, with 10 Blues in the team they were not going to throw in the towel and sustained possession, pressure and good running lines they broke the navy defence and scored tries through Kristin Cook, their MoTM and centre Murdoch, bringing the score to 33-28, with 15 mins left in the game.
Fresh legs from the substitutes seemed to give the navy some renewed energy and their best spell of the second half resulted a wave of attacks on the Cambridge line that finally resulted in a try for Mne (Kyle) Wood (42 Cdo RM) in his first start for the Navy Senior XV. The other debutee was Mne (John) Barnett (42 Cdo RM), last season's Navy U23 captain, he was drafted in to the squad this week after injuries in the back row and acquitted himself well in a senior shirt.
The Navy Senior XV travel to Dublin next week to face the Irish Defence Force's (IDF) in there annual fixture, before travelling West to play Devon on 20 Mar at The Rectory home of Devonport Services RFC.